


The unfamiliar language of your silent glances

by LilibethSonar



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Consent, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, Sex Pollen, Sexual Tension, Tender Sex, That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-09-24 22:28:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilibethSonar/pseuds/LilibethSonar
Summary: “We are… a day away from the base, I think, if we go on foot,” she mused, rotating the hologram this way and that. “Supposedly, it was abandoned in haste, sealed with all kinds of equipment, and ship parts, and whatnot still inside.” She looked at him over her shoulder. “You can grab everything that’ll do to repair the ship and be… gone before anyone from the Resistance even reaches this sector of the Outer Rim.”Acutely aware of how pointless his anger was, Ben deflated and nodded curtly. The plan was as good as any, given the circumstances. Taking everything they might need from the shuttle, they entered the forest once again, wicker treetops blocking their way out.___In which they get strangled on a backwater planet. The situation's under control, but there is something in the... air.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LueurdeLaube](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LueurdeLaube/gifts).



> Happy holidays, LueurdeLaube. I hope you'll like it. 
> 
> The story will be updated daily.

At long last, Kylo Ren’s reeling mind had calmed, the spinning loop of anger and anxiety slowing along with his breathing and dissipating — if only for a time — as he slipped deeper in a meditative state. The Force lapped at the edges of his consciousness, the push and pull of the cosmic tide in sync with the rise and fall of his chest. Kylo floated for a while, artificial gravity shut down, and let the Force carry him.

His eyes were closed, but as his awareness of the galaxy around him expanded, Kylo was starting to see the seams in the patched up hull of his commandeered Xi-class light shuttle — he was the Supreme Leader; he was commandeering, not stealing — and its cooling engines. The faint shimmer of the cloaking mechanism and the electric hum of the shields were reverberating through the nerve endings in Kylo’s scalp, under his knees, and ribs, and tongue. Under his eyelids, there was the infinite night of space. Eons of suns, scattered upon its black gown.

Kylo needed but a thread of the Force, not the galaxy; the thread, too, he could see — glowing bright and hot, it connected his mind to Rey’s. He was hesitant. Stalling.

Making his plans work wasn’t easy; day after day, he had to avert the eyes of multiple stormtroopers and the First Order officers and erase traces of his activities from various droids’ brains. Acting smart had proven to be quite a task. Kylo only had three, maybe four hours before his absence would be discovered — and then some time before his cowering adjutants would take the matter to Hux, their true master, and the security hell would break loose.

The thought of just… sleeping through it was wickedly tempting. But he was thinking too much — it was hardly a meditation at this point and his focus was starting to slip. Before he lost it completely, Kylo took hold of the thread and _tugged_ , bringing their bond to life.

He had to talk to Rey. Alone. Away from the Order’s listening walls, and surveillance systems, and spies. She didn’t have to respond — Rey was good at not responding, at keeping it all inside — or acknowledge his presence at all, for that matter — but, the Force help him, he had to tell—

Rey brushed the blossoming connection off.

_Not now, Ben!_

Kylo was affronted and more than a little annoyed. There wasn’t going to be another “now.”

With a flick of his wrist, he turned the gravitational field generators back on and slammed the soles of his boots onto the cockpit’s rattling metal floor. He hadn’t timed his every step, fixed a written-off shuttle while constantly looking over his shoulder, and hadn’t flown to the middle of nowhere, only to get a bloody “not now.”

It was the first thing Rey had said to him since the _Supremacy_ ; the words felt like grains of salt rubbed into split knuckles, but it wasn’t solely about him, so Kylo bit back a retort and held fast to Rey’s fading presence.

_Wait._

Rey came into view as he pressed against her mental shields, and Kylo realized she was on a ship of her own, wearing the Resistance pilot’s standard gear. He could see the vague outline of the ship’s helm — didn’t look like the _Millennium Falcon’s_ — and her hands were white-knuckled around it, tremors running up her arms. Rey’s eyes were fixed on something ahead of her. She was frowning, clenching her teeth… scared.

“Rey,” Kylo croaked out, “what’s going on?”

She glanced at him, tendril of panic swiping wide, gripping at him as her pupils dilated; and just like that, Rey’s shield gave way. As the bond opened fully, Kylo all but stumbled into it, caught off guard by a sudden vertigo. He had to sit down. Sounds became muted — clicks and beeps of his own ship’s systems waking up from the hibernation mod, the creak of his gloves’ leather from squeezing the pilot’s seat armrests — but Kylo could also hear, _feel_ the ship around Rey. It was an X-wing.

And it was falling apart.

“Where are you?” he demanded, flipping switches and pressing buttons on the control panel in rapid succession. His hands were shaking. Kylo reached out for the X-wing with the Force even though he knew it wouldn’t work through the bond. He wouldn’t—

“You won’t make it,” Rey whispered, and through her eyes he saw — or did he see it reflected in the hazel irises? — an atmosphere’s bluish halo and below it — a planet’s side’s gentle curve. The X-wing was vibrating so violently Rey’s teeth were clattering. Protruding parts of the hull had already started to burn in the atmosphere, filling the cockpit with orange light. Any moment now the heat of the friction would crack the soldered transparisteel viewport open like an egg.

Kylo wouldn’t make it no matter what.

He reached out to her mere minutes before her death.

Lightyears of vacuum took residence in the pit of his stomach, in the marrow of his bones, in his ringing ears — he was about to be ripped apart by it, and she was about to—

With a roar akin to a war cry, Rey pulled the helm towards herself, neck muscles rigid under her skin in the orange jumpsuit’s open collar.

“Where are you?!” Kylo pleaded.

“The Outer Rim,” Rey gritted out, “Tibia-27.” The glow of the atmosphere had faded. Rey was cast in shadow, strange flashes upon her face, glistening with sweat. She glanced at him again and said breathily, almost softly, “Ben….”

Then the X-wing jerked and the thread snapped. He couldn’t see her anymore, couldn’t feel her in the… Force. Ben was alone; space was dead around him.

*

Piloting the _Falcon_ , Rey felt as if she, herself, was flying. She felt at home. Maybe she was a natural when it came to Corellian spacecraft, or the Force was at work there, or the ship just _liked_ her — at times, the freighter seemed uncannily cognizant of her crew and passengers, so her having preferences and acting accordingly wouldn’t be a surprise, really.

Regardless of what the truth was, it had quickly lulled Rey into forgetting that she was not, in fact, an ace pilot. She could’ve become one, granted, but by the time she jumped into a fixed and re-fixed T-65B X-wing Starfighter, strapped in, and went off onto a scouting mission, she had had short of a year of _real_ practice. Simulations could only get you so far. Failed simulations could be stopped and started again, and again, and again.

… A comet’s tail was longer than Rey had anticipated. It grazed her ship’s side.

Then the shining, ice-spitting celestial beast was gone; so was the lower left wing, and Rey was spinning to her death. She thought her head might fall off. She _thought_ where the action must’ve been instantaneous. Rey managed to kill the engines, Forced — ha! — the ship in the direction opposite its rotation, and immediately turned the engines back on. The spinning came to a halt but precious seconds had already been lost — the ship was too close to Tibia-27, Rey’s initial destination, and the planet’s gravitation was pulling on its remaining wings, on its hull. On its sputtering engines which broke like a heart — at the worst possible moment. Rey was so done.

Naturally, that is when Ben chose to show up, dampening wailing alarm signals and shrieks of the Resistance issued astromech that had been losing its mind behind Rey; the poor droid wasn’t very quick to begin with, and it sounded like the loss of an entire wing had short-circuited something inside his brains.

Rey fought off the connection and the false feeling of relief it had awakened in her. Ben wouldn’t save her. _She couldn’t save him._ Even if he wanted to, there was nothing he could _do_ , and she couldn’t afford any more distractions. Rey gripped the helm so hard her fingers hurt and watched Tibia-27 grow hopelessly larger. Under the atmospheric pressure, the X-wing began to shake.

Ben didn’t let go of the bond, and he was… worried, afraid even. For her. It’s…. Rey couldn’t help but look at him — it might’ve been the last time, after all — but her head was still spinning and Ben’s face kept running away from her, so she turned her eyes back to the planet.

It was beautiful, the misty-green horizon rimmed by far away clouds colored sunset. _A nice planet to crash into,_ Rey thought, and exactly one thundering heartbeat later Ben asked where she was.

The strangled tone of his voice and all the things that were being left unspoken broke Rey’s heart in a new, terrible, bittersweet way. She mumbled something in return. None of it mattered — she could tell Ben was too far.

Yet she changed her grip on the helm and poured the Force into righting the X-wing’s trajectory. The angle entering the atmosphere was all wrong, the friction threatening to heat the ship’s outer plating to the point of combustion. Suffocating heat was rising in the cockpit but Rey was no stranger to it.

She was terrified, still, but no way in hell was she letting the fear stop her from surviving. Rey had always been determined. Sheer will wouldn’t fix the situation but if Rey could make it out of the higher layers in one piece, find an airstream that was strong enough….

When Ben asked again — _please, please_ — the angle was better. Adrenaline was pumping through her veins mixed with hope that Rey hid deep within herself — it was too soon for that. Her judgement clouded by the heady mix, she told him the planet’s name before whipping out of mesosphere and plummeting into the mountain of clouds that had been the sunlit line on the horizon _seconds_ earlier.

 _That_ was not part of the plan. Visibility became zero, and underneath the bond-created silence Rey could hear thunder rolling towards the X-wing. So much for not burning in the atmosphere!

“Ben,” she said, finally catching his eye. She meant to tell him… Rey didn’t really know what.

Don’t listen, she thought at both of them. Words were empty. This bond was empty, nothing but pain coming from it. Because of it, she had to watch him watch her die. Like never before, Rey wished it severed for good.

Then lightning struck.

*

Rey came to on the ice-crusted ground, still strapped to the pilot’s seat. From the corner of her eye she saw the parachute — the sad white blob — sprawled on the frozen dirt in the predawn gray. The sad blob that had saved her life, it seemed, although Rey wasn’t sure when and how she managed to eject. Did the mech do it?

Carefully, Rey released the latches on the safety belts and rolled out of the seat, limbs numb. There was a nagging pain in her left knee, the jumpsuit’s leg all muddy; she must’ve grazed the earth upon landing. Other than that Rey was in one piece which was… insane. Other than a few scrapes, and bruises, and burns from the safety belts, she was fine. No broken bones, nothing. Rey winced but stood up. She’d been through worse, though she wasn’t sure how a spaceship crash could _not_ top her previous experiences.

Darkness was thinning by the minute, revealing a forest edge, pale trees reaching up to low clouds, their bare branches intertwined like enormous fibers forming an enormous net. Then Rey’s eyes landed on an ugly trench plowed in the tree line by her own ship. The look of it startled her: the air was chilly and sweet, no trace of smoke in it, but the X-wing couldn’t have _not_ exploded, being fully fueled. She had assumed the chute had carried her much further from the crash site, but the X-wing’s scorched side was glaring at her from the end of the trench.

Cautiously, Rey approached it, boots slipping on the plowed-up soil as she climbed over broken trunks and tangles of roots torn out from the ground. The ship’s plating wasn’t even warm and there was hardly any new damage to it. It was… unsettling.

The mech was dead, the poor thing, its dome visibly scorched. Rey’s gut told her that, should she check the droid’s core schematics, she’d find them in a similar state.

_Shame._

Shaking her head, she got up from her crouching position on the ship’s rear and ungracefully thudded into the cockpit. All systems were down; her comlink hadn’t fared any better since it had been plugged in the control panel in place of the X-wing’s missing one. _Okay. Okay._ Who in the Resistance knew where she was g—

_Ben._

_Kriff!_ She didn’t remember much, but… kriff. She’d blown her first solo mission before it even started by spilling the planet’s top secret name to the Supreme Leader. The thought made Rey want to bang her forehead on the nearest hard surface.

He was going to come after her, wasn’t he?

Briefly, she considered reaching out to him through the bond to see if he was… what? Okay? Rey swore under her breath. There was no need to assist him further by seeking him out. Tibia-27 wasn’t a small planet, but it was listed as populated mostly by a semi-sentient plant lives, so Rey was pretty much out in the open in the Force, no humanoid signatures to mask hers for miles. If Ben was to set his mind — literally — to it, he’d find her. Any minute now, Rey expected to hear shrieks of TIE-fighters ripping the clouds apart.

She was not expecting him to come alone.

*

Throughout the hours it took him to get to Tibia-27, Ben believed Rey to be dead.

He had always been so quick to turn his anger, his grief into violence, to pour the emotions out of his constricted lungs and into the fierce flow of plasma. Yet as the blue of hyperspace flickered outside the viewport, Ben remained motionless.

“Is this what being frozen in carbonite felt like?” He would never ask his father. There was no one to ask.

There was no one.

The shuttle dropped out of hyperspace, and Ben set the planetfall sequence on autopilot. When Ben thought about it later, his reaction seemed at odds with his knowledge of the Force and previous experiences. Being unable to feel someone was _nothing_ like feeling them die. But Ben had been so used to the absolute worst scenarios; hope hadn’t easily awakened in his heart.

It did, it did, it did wake up as the shuttle reached the atmosphere’s lower layers, and Ben’s heart threatened to burst. He inhaled, ribs aching. A weird sound escaped his throat. Rey’s Force-signature was back in his sky. He followed it like a lodestar.

*

Running away blindly wouldn’t do her much good, she figured, so Rey was preparing to face Ben. Or was it Kylo Ren? And while she was waiting — why was she always the one who had to wait? — she buried the mech. She dug a hole between pale snake-like roots, loosening the rock-hard soil with the Force, and lowered the droid’s dome into it. Ben’s arrival interrupted her, but there was not much more she could do for the mech, anyway.

There were no TIEs, in the end, but a single Xi-class light shuttle — still black but far less impressive than the one Rey had seen him arrive in for battle, both on Takodana and on Crait. This one was no bird of prey worthy of the Supreme Leader. It was just a shuttle, and there was something inexplicably soothing about it. Still, she was on her feet in a second, her hand on the blaster at her belt.

_Should’ve hurried up with fixing the lightsaber. Kriff._

Nothing happened, although she knew in her bones that Ben was watching her through the cockpit’s viewport. Minutes passed. Rey shifted discreetly, trying to put less weight on her bruised knee. Not so discreetly, she then wiped her palms on her jumpsuit — it was already dirty as a cantina table’s underside, what were a few more earthy streaks?

“Are you going to come out or not?” she called at last.

At that, the shuttle’s ramp finally hissed, opening its underbelly, and Ben marched out. He was heading straight for her, his strides fast and fists balled, but Rey refused to back away. Only when he had stopped an arm’s length from her, did it really hit her: he’d come alone; he still hadn’t drawn his saber.

Her memories of their last conversation, such as it was, were blurry, details drained from her brain along with adrenalin. How did Ben sound when he asked her…? Was his fear for her a figment of her imagination — or was it real?

“I expected to find your body,” Ben complained, voice like the frozen ground under their feet.

_Nevermind._

“Oh, excuse me for ruining your expectations,” she snapped. A shadow of hurt slid over Ben’s eyes; it was fleeting but Rey caught it. What were they saying? Timidly, she reached out with the Force. Ben’s signature was distinct against the faint hum of the dormant forest, yet it seemed distorted. Something akin to static wouldn’t let her grasp at what his emotions were.

Rey huffed. _Fine._ If he wanted to hide behind his walls….  

She wished she could bring back her anger from Crait. Standing opposite him without it warming her blood, Rey felt lost more than anything and lonelier than ever. Without anger she had nothing but heartbreak. She’d been nursing it since she washed Crait’s salt off of her skin.

Rey sniffed. “Why are you even here?”

Ben looked at her, then, like he couldn’t decide if she was mocking him or just being slow, like she was supposed to know what the hell was going on in that stubborn head of his — and all the while he was clad in the buzzing static, _the dick._

Rey didn’t know. He had been furious with her for months and after that — silent, and now he was… what? Did he rush here to save her or to spit on the crisp remains of her? Rey didn’t ask him that. She had been ready for a duel, not bickering.

“Forget it,” she muttered and nodded at his shuttle. “What’s with the ship?”

Ben blinked. “The ship?”

“Yeah, the ship. It’s kind of… dingy.”

“You’re one to talk,” he threw back, pointing behind her at the X-wing.

He had a point. Her T-65B had been sleeping on a backwater planet’s ships’ graveyard since before Rey was born. It wasn’t new and shiny, crash or not. The jab stung nevertheless. She’d salvaged the parts for this ship herself.

“Well, I’m not ruling the galaxy.”

“Neither am I.”

It was Rey’s turn to blink. She was genuinely unsure she had heard him right, but hope spread its wings within her chest. It was too soon, and when it died at his next words, it was oh-so painful.

“This is my escape ship,” Ben explained carefully. “When I opened the bond I— I meant to say goodbye.”


	2. Chapter 2

Oh, but hope was a cruel thing. So quickly, Ben jumped from hoping Rey wasn’t injured too badly to a bizarre fantasy of her waiting for him.

She wasn’t hurt.

But she clearly didn’t want him there, either, her hand on her blaster.

Seeing Rey alive turned him into a trembling mess. His body, and face, and voice, he managed to get under control. His mind, however — his _hopes…_. Even if Ben wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to lock them all away. They sang and swirled in the Force;  Ben could’ve just as well been carrying his heart on a silver platter.

… Rey let his unspoken confessions roll over her mental shields and didn’t bat an eye, mind hidden from him in a cocoon of buzzing static. An unequivocal rejection.

“Why are you even here?”

_Why, indeed._

He wasn’t regretting coming to Tibia, Ben found, despite his actual plans likely going up in flames in his absence. Now that he knew Rey had survived, Ben could keep surviving, too, for as long as needed. He would probably not be able to if….

Not that it would have mattered in the long run.

As he was struggling to put it into words, Rey changed the subject, and it was as much an indication that whatever he had to say was unrequited as a direct reprimand would’ve been. Fair enough. He had been her means to an end on the _Supremacy_. If she had cared about him then, even a little, on Crait he’d seen all traces of compassion leave her eyes. Kylo Ren was her enemy. Ben wasn’t, so he had no place in Rey’s story.

It was time to end this detour.

“I meant to say goodbye.”

“You’re— You’re running away?” Rey stuttered.

“From a certain point of view,” Ben offered after a beat of silence. She didn’t ask him to elaborate for which he was momentarily grateful; Ben wasn’t any better at lying by omission than at actual lying, and the Force wouldn’t’ve helped him here. Besides, he was, in part, eager to get away. Her proximity was starting to pull him in opposite directions like a bloody rack: he wanted to distance himself from her rejection but at the same time—

They were in one space physically. In another life he could have gathered her into his arms.

“So, are you leaving alone?” Rey asked, her expression carefully neutral. Was she _judging_ him?

“Why? Do you need a lift?” He crossed his arms over his tight chest.

“What? No! That’s not what I….” She trailed off. Then, firmly: “Everything’s under control. Go.”

Ben sighed. “Then this is goodbye.”

At this, Rey wouldn’t say anything and wouldn’t meet his eyes. Ben turned away after hesitating for what felt like forever.

While they had been speaking, the cloud blanket had become threadbare, sunrays poking through it; mud squelched under his boots. Ben was halfway back to the shuttle, when—

“Ben, wait!”

Her posture was rigid, yet she sounded almost sheepish. “My comlink got fried. Can I send a distress signal from your shuttle? I— It’s going to be a few days before they realize something went wrong and come after me, otherwise. We’re keeping radio-silence unless there’s an emergency.”

“You want to comm _the Resistance_ from my _escape_ ship?” He was incredulous. “I won’t expose myself like like that.”

_I’ll never have you but at least I’ll have my exit._

But he couldn’t just leave either. Ben had assumed that Rey had managed a rough landing, but now that he was looking at her X-wing, the missing wing and… all of it, the sight was making him fight off panic again. She really could’ve died.

“Why did _you_ come here?” he asked.

“What?” Rey frowned at the question, her gaze guarded.

“You were in this planet’s orbit for a reason, weren’t you?” Almost against his own will, Ben stepped closer to her yet again. “What was it?”

For a heartbeat, she appeared conflicted but then shrugged.

“Scouting mission. There’s an old Rebel base….”

 _Of course there is._ The urge to roll his eyes was so strong he had to close them instead. Was there a single backwater planet that _didn’t_ have a Rebel base hidden among its swamps, or forests, or sands?

“Let me get you there,” he proposed, hoping he sounded reasonable and not like he was begging her all of a sudden. “You can comm your Resistance friends from there… or, if the tech has gone rotten, at least you’ll have shelter to wait for help — and I’ll be on my merry way with my ship still untraceable and my conscience clean.”

“Your conscience, really?” Rey snorted humorously.

“Yes. I don’t know if I could ever be at peace after lifting the ramp on you.”

Her eyes shot to him, frown deepening. Yet she nodded and followed him inside the shuttle several minutes later.

 

*

 

Something shattered in Rey when she saw Ben turn to leave. It filled her ears with a high-pitched ringing akin to the sound that crystal-critters’ pelts made as the animals fled in panic.

She thought— She’d tried, tried not to think about it but couldn’t help herself. In the dead of night, Rey imagined him choosing _her_ over the First Order and leaving the dark behind. Coming home. It had never occurred to her that Ben might let go of the past and just… move on.

It’s _that day_ on Jakku all over again, the Ghtroc light freighter that _she_ had repaired taking off without her, stolen by liars and cheaters Devi and Strunk. Except this time, Rey had been lying to, and cheating, and stealing time from herself. She hadn’t ever given voice to it, but she had been waiting for Ben to turn to the light. But since Crait, she had done _nothing_ to sway him, too hurt, too scared by her failure on the _Supremacy_. And now he was leaving, so Rey blurted out the very first thing that came to her mind.

Just so he would wait a little bit longer.

Without any hesitation, Rey fed the coordinates of the base and a map of the surrounding terrain from her mem-stick — the only electronic piece of the X-wing that hadn’t gotten fried — to the shuttle’s navigation computer. In the off-chance of Ben telling an elaborate lie — which seemed very unlike him, but then again, so did running away — him knowing the exact location wouldn’t make much difference: the Supreme Leader’s army could look under every Tibian stone in search of the rebels anyway. The planet had become off-limits to the Resistance the second she revealed its name.

The shuttle’s engines came to life abruptly, blowing broken branches and splintered tree trunks from beneath the lifting ramp. But their roar was too loud and the ship took off with noticeable strain.

“It didn’t sound like that before,” Ben said somewhat apologetically as the clearing created by the crash slipped under the shuttle’s belly and disappeared in the distance, swallowed by the forest’s wide white body.

Rey hummed in acknowledgment. Now that they were on board, she had no idea what to do. It wasn’t quite as bad as spontaneously showing up on the enemies’ flagship in terms of not having a plan, but it certainly was way more awkward.

Perched in the co-pilot’s seat, she gave Ben a side glance. He was looking very intently at the control panel. She was about to ask if toggle-switches and buttons had wronged him somehow when he bit out:

“Something’s not right.”

Suddenly very alert, Rey turned fully to the controls. Kriff! Rows of wrong buttons were lit. How out of it had she been to not realize it sooner?

“The engines?” Several new red lights flared as she spoke.

“It’s not the ship,” Ben growled, hands flying over the panel. “We’re being pulled to the surface.”

“We— What?!”

“I said what I said! Now give me a hand, will you?!”

“Right, sorry.”

Piloting the falling shuttle with Ben felt a lot like fighting at his side. Rey would revel in the feverish synchrony of it if the shuttle wasn’t… falling or whatever it was doing, kriffing around with Tibia’s gravitation.

Idly, Rey wondered if they’d be as in sync in the sheets and the thought was so ridiculously ill-timed and out of the blue, Rey ley out a short hiccuping laugh. Ben gave her an odd look. He grazed her left hand’s knuckles with his fingertips — a barely there touch — before starting the landing sequence.

 

*

 

The good news was, they hadn’t been pulled from the sky by a tractor beam. Decloaking hadn’t shown any other vessels, and nobody had attacked them so far (which was making the situation unnecessarily mysterious, but he wasn’t going to complain). Everything else was odd news.

Ben knew they’d covered several hundred miles but it was as if the shuttle had never taken off, the same dead forest outside the viewport for as far as the eye could see. The landing was… strange. He had had his fair share of rough flights and rougher landings, but this time was unlike anything he had ever experienced. It felt like the ship had met an air cushion as the tree tops had started scratching its outer plating. Then it splattered onto the marshy ground with the condemning crunch of wood, and now Ben was standing neck deep in the cramped tech compartment under the shuttle’s floor, the acrid smell of singed wiring making his nose itch. He swore under his breath.

“That bad?” Rey peered at him from above.

He shrugged. “The isolation is toast. I could get away with coating it with thermal paste to compensate for the overheating… but I don’t have nearly enough thermal paste, so it’ll likely combust upon the next takeoff. It’s… sooner than I expected.”

Ben lifted himself out of the compartment, bracing his palms and then his right knee on the metal floor, and came nose to nose with Rey who had sat back on her heels at some point while he hadn’t been looking.

Their breaths mingled for one blessed moment, Rey’s irises growing dark. Then it was over; Ben got to his feet ponderously and pushed the displaced floor section from above the compartment back in place. Rey stood up, too; he thought he saw her wince but he must’ve imagined it. She was still hiding in the static, so whatever it was, she probably didn’t want him to pry.

Thunderous, Ben stalked back to the cockpit where the holographic map of the area shined blue above the nav computer’s display, the Rebel base a red dot inside a shimmering hill.

“After today, I _don’t_ _want_ to combust along with the ship,” Rey said quietly from behind him. “And I don’t want _you_ to combust either.”

_Oh, sweetheart._

“Why, thank you,” he muttered, shaking his head ruefully.

Rounding him, she tapped on the display to locate the shuttle on the map. A smaller dot appeared.

“We are… a day away from the base, I think, if we go on foot,” she mused, rotating the hologram this way and that. “Supposedly, it was abandoned in haste, sealed with all kinds of equipment, and ship parts, and whatnot still inside.” She looked at him over her shoulder. “You can grab everything that’ll do to repair the ship and be… gone before anyone from the Resistance even reaches this sector of the Outer Rim.”

Acutely aware of how pointless his anger was, Ben deflated and nodded curtly. The plan was as good as any, given the circumstances. There was one thing, though.

“Do you know why the Rebels fled like that? I’ve never heard of my mother’s folks just leaving things behind.”

Rey scratched her head. “The data is fragmentary, but from what we’ve gathered, there had been some highly destructive solar activity, like a plasma storm.”

 _That explains why the Force currents are so weak here,_ Ben thought, transferring the map onto his datapad. _The planet is nearly comatose._

Taking everything they might need from the shuttle, they entered the forest once again, wicker treetops blocking their way out.

 

*

 

“No, it wasn’t an engine problem. I did a damn good job fixing that shuttle before leaving to— leaving the Order,” Ben snapped.

Trudging after him, Rey couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “So you’re saying, what, some tree _tractorbeamed_ us after all?”

_“No.”_

“Then what was it?”

“Not my shuttle’s fault…. I don’t think,” he added much quieter.

She wanted to be annoyed with him but couldn’t. Ben was just _so offended_ by the insinuation; even his knapsack looked gloomy, rocking slightly in time with his stomping through the dry undergrowth. On top of that, he was leaving _giant_ footprints in the still slightly wet ground — it was like following a luggabeast. Rey snorted. The tips of Ben’s ears visible through his hair reddened; after a good few minutes of internal struggle, Rey decided to spare him and not comment on it.

It was illogical, perhaps, but now that their farewell had been delayed, her mood became so light and breathy — despite everything — one might think she had been inhaling _uplifting spirits_ from Jakku “entertainment tents” with their greasy canvas walls and the smell of bodily filth masked by sickeningly sweet fumes. The association was making her stomach turn — yet all the while a smile was tugging at her lips, sweetness coating her tongue.

“Ben,” Rey squeaked at last, “I think something’s—”

“In the air? Yes, I noticed. It’s—”

“So weird.”

Ben cleared his throat. “The temperature is rising. I guess it… awakens some microorganisms in the soil, or spores, or… I don’t know. What does the Rebel intel say about Tibia?”

“The planet had always been pretty dull, according to it. Nothing out of the ordinary to be wary of— Ah, kriff!” A stone under Rey’s left foot shifted and a sharp pain shot through her knee, quelling the euphoria somewhat. As she doubled over, rubbing it soothingly, Rey could feel Ben’s eyes on her.

“How bad is it?” he asked timidly, stepping towards her.

“I’m… afraid to find out.” Looking up, the concern she saw on his face cut her deep and filled the cut with hope. Bloody hope, again.

“I put some bacta on it while I….” _While I was waiting for you._ “It’s just bruised.”

“I’ve got a bacta-bandage.” Ben slid the knapsack off his shoulders, and Rey’s brain must’ve shut down for a second because she was so surprised. She blinked — and then Ben was kneeling next to her, a roll of repelfab saturated with bacta in one hand, the other brushing the leg of her jumpsuit.

“May I…?”

The forest around them was translucent, white bark wrapped in gray winter shadows.

Rey nodded, mouth dry.

As he rolled up the baggy pant leg, revealing the nasty purple bruising, Ben _tsk_ ed, running his fingers lightly over her swollen muscles. Rey’s breath caught in her throat. He tilted his head and stooped a little to see better. Staring at the crown of his head, Rey’s hands itched to tangle in his hair. Aside from that one stormy night on Ahch-To, she hadn’t given it much thought. His hair. Then, by the firelight, she had wanted to touch it — to touch _him_ — to make sure he was real despite being light years away from her, somewhere far across the stars. Now she—

Ben finished crisscrossing the slimy bandage around her leg, from thigh to calf, and bent it slightly, hooking his palm behind the knee, to see that the wrapping wasn’t too tight. Startled, Rey lost her balance and grabbed at his shoulders for support, gulping down a lungful of the spiced up Tibian air.

_She wanted to tug at his hair, crush her mouth to his, claw at the black of his clothes, pin him to the ground, make the vision come true, make him hers._

Rey let go of Ben as if burned, the stream of consciousness trickling along her spine and down between her legs. For the briefest moment before also letting go, Ben dragged the pads of his fingers along the bandage, smearing them with bacta and giving the thick clear substance a thoughtful look. It was over so soon, Rey was left blinking in confusion, unsure if she hadn’t just imagined it.

She got even more confused when Ben handed his knapsack to her, turned around and patted his shoulder. _What the…?_

“Well… done?”

At this, Ben suddenly bent forward, wheezing. “Thank you, but that’s not what I meant,” he managed after a few deep breaths, rubbing at the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t straightening, and, bewildered as she was — he’d laughed, he had actually laughed — Rey nearly choked as understanding dawned on her.

“You mean to _piggyback_ me?!”

Ben huffed, exasperated.

“Your knee is swelling; if you keep walking throughout the day, you’ll need to drain bad blood from it by the morning, bacta or not. Come on, we’re wasting daylight.” He patted his shoulder again, crouching.

Sighing, Rey secured his knapsack on her back next to her own and twined her arms around Ben’s neck.

He was very… warm. Rey wasn’t exactly made from sunheat and hunger anymore — she had built more muscle in a few month with the Resistance than she had ever been able to on Jakku, so it wasn’t like Ben was having an effortless stroll in the forest. He had broken a sweat; under her palms, his chest expanded like he had bellows for lungs. Still. There was something so… _Ben_ about his warmth. About how warm he was making her feel.

Part of her was desperate to doze off, safe and sound and cared for. Another part was bitter because he hadn’t lowered his weird staticky barriers a hair, and she couldn’t even be sure if he was okay with carrying her or if he endured for the sake of enduring — now, _that_ seemed like the most Ben thing of all. Rey wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

And then there was an inexplicably horny part which insisted that licking the sweat drops from Ben’s neck was the best possible course of action. This part’s opinion about the heat of Ben’s palms on the backs of her thighs was incoherent but a more positive one than Rey had thought herself able to form about any man’s touch landing this close to her ass.

She hid her face — flushed and shiny with perspiration for all the wrong reasons — in his shoulder, if only for the line of skin above his high collar to stop calling to her.

Stupid. This impossible part of her, she tucked away. The fact that Ben had been ignoring the bond didn’t mean it was… _fine_ to brandish all this nonsense out into the Force.

With her eyes closed, Rey did fall asleep. She dreamed fleetingly about making love under white branches and stars.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LueurdeLaube, thank you for the request, I had so much fun writing it! 
> 
> A big big thank you to my beta, fulcrum_of_pemberley! Everyone who's enjoyed this fic so far should know that without expert beta-ing you'd probably enjoy it in terms of laughing your asses off (for all the wrong reasons). :D
> 
> Lastly, THANK YOU to everyone who read and commented on this story. You're the best. <3

Miraculously, Ben had made it through the day.

He had believed he’d put a lid on his desire for Rey. The first few night cycles after Crait had been the worst; a mix of fury, and shame, and lust for which his body had no outlet burned so potently in his veins that sleep had shunned him despite his exhaustion. When, at last, he got some rest, the problem of arousal… had arisen. Ben had been afraid to touch himself. As pathetic as he was, he would’ve inevitably started thinking of Rey, and he just… couldn’t. Her rejection had already poisoned both his dreams and waking hours; to whine and moan with his fist around his cock, imagining a life that would always be out of reach— No.

It had become easier as time passed. He’d been celibate throughout his entire life; remaining celibate for the years — or possibly months, if Hux would hurry with his coup — he had left wouldn’t’ve been a big deal. Just one more disappointment on top of the enormous shit pile.

Landing on Tibia-27, he had crushed the urge to hold Rey to his chest, wary of the walls she’d put up. Naturally, the barest brush of skin on skin had made his repressed longing return with a vengeance and quickly morph into _lusting_.

Carrying Rey through the forest, Ben had been gritting his teeth against fantasies of pressing his mouth to the apex of her legs through the jumpsuit’s smooth fabric as he knelt before her. He’d warm her to the core with his hot ragged breath and lap at her until the layers that she was wearing were wet with slick and spit and she was boneless above him.

Walking with the raging boner had been… challenging, to say the least — thank the Force, Rey had fallen asleep! — but somehow, he had made it.

Night wrapped around them like a blanket of indigo and firelight. The air cooled again, and so did Ben. By the time they had set up camp and zipped their respective versatex bedrolls — Rey’s much shabbier than his, looking like it was sewn from old survival suits — he was able to think straight again, his attention not laser-focused on Rey anymore.

For a while, he laid with nothing but the crackling of the white wood in the fire filling his mind. The quiet was so vast. The longer he listened to it, though, the less peaceful it seemed. Ben couldn’t put his finger on it during the day (because he’d been daydreaming about putting his fingers elsewhere, _creep_ ) but now it was slowly dawning on him what was so uncanny about this forest. The quiet.

True, the hemisphere they were on appeared to be in the middle of the colder season typical for this climatic zone. But this wasn’t Hoth winter; there ought to be more… life. Small critters, birds — any and all life forms to make all kinds of noises. With only dry brushwood snapping under his boots, the forest sounded… dead.

“I don’t trust this place,” Ben drawled, addressing the stars above him rather than Rey, assuming she was already asleep.

She answered, however.

“Think we should take shifts?” Lying on her side, she propped herself on one elbow to see him over the fire. Yellow sparks were dancing before her face, reflected in her hooded eyes.

“N-no,” Ben uttered when the silence between then started to stretch. So much for cooling down. “I’m a light sleeper — should anyone come our way, I’ll pick up on their Force-signatures. But that’s not what I…. I don’t sense any danger, it’s just odd.”

Rey hummed in agreement. “It is. That thing in the soil… I think it’s an aphrodisiac.”

Ben choked on his saliva.

Weary, Rey watched him gulp water from his canteen. “I take it you were affected similarly,” she stated as he managed to take a breath again.

Denying it would be stupid, considering how hot his face was burning. He nodded, grim.

“Should’ve taken respirators from your shuttle. Good night, Ben.” Rey plopped on the ground, the versatex rustling as she rolled onto her side and burrowed deeper in her bedroll.  

There was no judgement in her reaction but it stung for some reason. Ben didn’t respond. The heavy slumber only overtook him well after midnight; he dreamed of static.

 

*

 

She dreamed of making love again.

Rey was in the forest, lying on the wet, fertile ground under the trees, and their roots were snaking up her bare legs. It was dark but Rey’s eyes found no stars in the boundless blackness above her; there were nothing but pale branches, glowing eerily without any light, every inch of them covered in delicate white petals. The petals rained down on Rey like kisses on her cheeks, and eyelids, and tingling lips.

The roots that were seizing her ankles turned into two warm, wide palms, and calloused fingertips started to dance over the old scars on her calves, on her knees. With gentle touches, they connected the hidden moles on her inner thighs before pressing her legs apart.

Rey felt the weight and heat of his body covering hers, and the pale branches in her line of vision became collar bones, and rigid neck, and jaw, and whispered words of need. He burned against her quivering stomach, hard. As they canted their hips and came together, Rey started to burn, too. She was brimming with the Force, her every cell filled to bursting with released energy, on the verge of something new. Something beautiful.

Rey held Ben to her, held on to him with her arms and legs, and her fingers were leaving smears of earth on the white-hot skin of his back.

 

..

 

She woke up with a start, her feet tangled in the bedroll and her jumpsuit sticking to her clammy, oversensitive skin. The stars had shifted in the sky but the night still reigned. Glancing to the side, Rey realized it was a sudden movement that had awoken her. Ben was looming over the fire, looking at her with his eyes as black as coal.

“Ben?” she called softly, and it was as if he came to from a sleep walk, a full body jolt shooting through his every nerve.

Ben staggered back a few steps; his arousal was evident despite the flickering shadows cast around their camp by the low-burning fire.

 _So it is aphrodisiac_ , Rey thought, but the sweet smell filling her head like cotton made the thought distant and brief. Pressing her thighs together against the throbbing in her core, she unzipped the bedroll.

All the while, their eyes were locked. On Ben’s face, raw want and horror were morphing into one another like fleeting visions that live in the fire. He clenched and unclenched his fists at her approach, his spine, and neck, and shoulders tense.

“Wait,” he rasped, but Rey had already laced her fingers behind his head, pulling him down to her.

He was… frustratingly hard to bend when unwilling. But as Rey whispered his name, his eyelids fluttered closed and he started to lean into her. Their lips brushed together. Then a log snapped inside the fire, its red-hot form glowing in the growing pile of cinder; a streak of gray-blue smoke rose from the dying flames.

“It’s not the soil,” Ben mumbled against her mouth. A bit more alert, he was staring at the smoke. “The trees….”

“What does it matter?” Rey said urgently. Her body was starting to ache from emptiness. “I missed you so much. I can’t bear to see you leave, but if you have to, please, give me this. Please, Ben.”

At some point, Rey’s own eyes had fallen shut. She felt tears slide down her cheeks and under Ben’s palms — he was cupping her face in his massive, calloused hands, she realized. Ben pressed his forehead to hers. The tips of his eyelashes were tickling her slightly as he blinked.

“Open to me. Lower your shields. I need to know it’s you and not the forest talking.”

The words sobered Rey up, if only a little.

“M-my shields are down. Have been down since before the crash.” She had to speak slowly so that she didn’t slur, but her thoughts became less sluggish. “ _You_ have been walled off!” Rey jabbed a finger into Ben’s chest for good measure.

His mouth hung open; the wet glint of his lower lip was distracting her, so Rey hurried to extricate herself from the heaven of Ben’s touch. The night chill immediately slithered into her collar.

“I don’t— I’m not—” He coughed, inhaling more smoke, and covered the lower part of his face with his sleeve. “We need to get out of the forest,” he managed to say.

Moving away from him seemed… _so stupid, pointless, why would she ever do it?_ It was worse than the _Supremacy_. Then, she had to protect people she cared about, the threat to their lives spurring her on, straightening her back. Now there was only Ben. Rey wanted him and couldn’t remember why she shouldn’t.

Yet she did move. Frantically fixing the bandage on her hurt leg, she said over her shoulder: “There must be air-filtration systems on the base.”

The repelfab kept slipping from her trembling fingers. Ben didn’t respond. _Again_. Throwing a glance at him, Rey saw him biting his lips, their skin white from the pressure, drops of blood on his chin.

 

*

 

What had occurred by the fire — it had scared him. Ben didn’t remember waking up or for how long he had been standing over Rey. He could’ve stepped right into the flames and not noticed. And the things that the smoke was urging him to do were… animalistic. Dark.

Ben knew Rey would’ve come to him if he’d opened his arms — _wanted to make her come again again again with his cock his tongue his fingers under him on the ground covered in soot_ — only to recoil from him the moment the aphrodisiac was gone from their veins.

It had helped him to keep his restraint.

She was waiting for him away from the camp, hidden among the trees, while he choked the fire by covering the ashes with handfuls of earth. After, he had to dash away and spend several agonizing minutes willing his erection away. _Animal_. When his head cleared and Ben could trust himself again, he signaled in Rey’s general direction with his flashlight. The answering signal came within seconds, and they moved through the pale forest parallel to each other.

At first, Ben could only see the beam of Rey’ flashlight, but as the sky started to lighten, her slim figure became visible as well, the orange jumpsuit blooming along with the dawn.

“Tell me a story,” Rey asked after a while. In the eerie silence her voice rang clear as a bell.

“A story?” His own sounded hoarse with misuse.

“Or anything, really…. Although, wait. What have you been doing all these months? Supreaming? Why are you running? I’m thinking in circles and it drives me mad. And— Well, it’s not like I’ll have many more chances to ask you any of it.”

_Where do I even start?_

_“I can’t bear to see you leave.” Could you mean it?_

“I was… interviewing Stormtroopers.”

“You what?!”

His answer stopped Rey dead in her tracks.

“I don’t know how else to put it,” Ben shrugged. He wasn’t slowing down, but soon Rey caught up with him, now walking a few paces closer, although still not quite beside him.

“Hux has been planning a coup,” he continued, “but he has been so thorough, it had given me enough time to prepare a counter strike. I started to look for those deviating from Hux’s programming in order to… use them as pawns. But the more I was seeing in their minds, the more I—”

Rey was listening with rapt attention, her left sleeve almost brushing his right. They couldn’t help but gravitate towards each other, it appeared.

“Before, it was so easy to justify all of it,” Ben said under his breath. Pouring his past turmoil into words wasn’t easy. Ben opened and closed his mouth, mute. Then, “Among all the things I’d see dead, the First Order is _the first_. It’s Snoke’s legacy from top to bottom.”  

Beside him, Rey let out a breath she had been holding.

Ben cleared his throat. “So I weakened its strategic points as much as was possible for it to go unnoticed, placed my knights and the stormtroopers whose loyalty I’d won on a few key posts, and tipped off people who would tip off the Resistance. I was planning to personally blow up Hux’s new military pet project before the fight even started, but you decided to crash, so I had to… put that on hold.”

“But….” Rey frowned. “Why haven’t you come to us? Your _mother_ would’ve helped, I would’ve helped. If this project is another super weapon, how were you going to blow it up flying a light shuttle? You’d have to detonate the core reactor from the insi—” She tripped over the sentence, running into the inevitable conclusion.

The tiniest smile tugged at Ben’s lips. She was so bright. Of course, she figured him out.

It was a sad smile.

Rey’s steps slowed and she grabbed his elbow — Ben stopped but didn’t turn to her.

“The goodbye.” _Ah, someone’s angry._ “Did you want to say it because you were leaving — or because you didn’t plan to leave alive?”

 

*

 

She had started to limp but Rey ignored the pain, pressing forward at a fury-fueled speed. The Rebel base’s concrete dome was glowing white in the morning light; occasional deformed trees still climbed the hillside but the forest stayed behind.

By now the sickeningly sweet tang didn’t cling to the roof of Rey’s mouth as she sucked in breaths through her gritted teeth.

Ben was following her in heavy silence.

At last they reached a set of reinforced doors and Rey all but hammered the access chip into the outdated lock. The doors opened with a groan of corroded metal, flakes of rust filling the air; the passage led to a long corridor — more concrete, durasteel, exposed light-cables flickering to life upon their entrance. In the distance, the automatically activated ventilation had already started to hum.

“Say what you need to say,” Ben grumbled as they reached the end of the poorly lit corridor, “or you’ll be the one to explode.”

The joke fell flat. Rey whirled around, facing him, her blunt nails digging into the meat of her palms.

“Heroic sacrifice, really?! That’s what you planned — to get yourself killed and leave— leave me with the void where our bond had been?”

There it was again, the shadow of pain sliding over his features.

“It was always going to end with the void, one way or another.” Brushing past her, Ben pushed apart the doors to the control center standing askew in their grooves. Inside, every surface was covered by a thick layer of oily dust. “This scenario was certainly preferable to crossing paths on a battlefield. Killing each other. And don’t be naïve, in the Resistance, I would’ve gotten a swift head shot, not help.”

At this, Rey’s arms hung limply by her sides as if they were empty sleeves. “And you haven’t come up with a single scenario where we _don’t_ fight?”

“You were prepared to yesterday, weren’t you?”

The blaster on her belt suddenly became too heavy. “I wouldn’t’ve….” Rey trailed off.

“I’m sorry for deceiving you. Didn’t think it’d work,” Ben chuckled, absentmindedly trailing his fingers through the dust. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me now. The bond is fading — it’ll dissipate harmlessly whether I live or not. You’ll be alright.”

“It’s not fading!” Rey exclaimed; her heart jumped into her throat. “We could feel each other just fine less than a full standard day ago. This is something else, it has to be….”

“What would you do if it went back to normal this very minute?” Ben prompted, a drop of acid in this tone rendering his calm fake. “Go back to ignoring me like you had been doing for months? Would you show me that your pleas from last night were empty?”

When she didn’t reply, Ben sighed. “I’ll go look around.” And with that, he disappeared in the base’s dusty bowels.

Uneasy in the concrete box of a control center, Rey found a room with a window, the narrow transparisteel pane murky with brownish drips. She could see the forest from there, barren and miserable.

It wasn’t that she had nothing with which to answer Ben — she had _too much_ . All her worries, and hurts, and loneliness, and longing, Rey had right on the tip of her tongue. Behind her sealed lips. Those were the walls that had nothing to do with the Force. _Rey’s_ walls. She’d been hiding inside them for so long, she didn’t know how to get out anymore. But she had to figure it out.

For both of them.

 

*

 

Rey hadn’t noticed him yet, staring out the window in utmost concentration. Ben could just… go, he supposed. A sack of spare parts was waiting for him by the entrance to the control center. There were no more reasons to stay. Except his feet were glued to the floor now that he had his eyes on her.

“So, the bad news is,” he said, leaning against the doorframe in what he hoped at least resembled a nonchalant manner, “the whole basement is honeycombed by those blasted trees’ roots. They must be spreading like a mycelium. The good news is….” Ben reached into his pocket and threw a slim steel syringe to Rey, who caught it effortlessly. “I found an anti-toxin of a wide spectrum that doesn’t expire for another forty years. Tried it after the basement — it’s, ah, quite a mood killer. Just what we need.”

Rey’s face lit up.

“You’re saying I won’t get drunk on the aphrodisiac thanks to it?”

“It seems so, yes….” He was still talking when Rey injected herself in the forearm. She did it so quickly, Ben was left with his mouth hanging open. “… Disinfecting is for the weak in spirit, I take it,” he managed; the clatter of the fallen syringe robbed him of the rest.

Before Ben could react, Rey embraced him, twining her arms around his ribs and pressing her forehead to his collarbone.

“R-rey?!” he sputtered, arms flailing.

“This is me talking, not the trees,” she sighed over his racing heart. “I don’t want to fight you, or to kill you, or for you to die, or for you to go. I’ve missed you more than I know how to express. Had the bond remained intact….” She was rushing through her confession as if afraid to run out of the clean air. Bewildered, Ben patted the back of her head. Then the meaning of what Rey had just said sank in, and he tangled his fingers in her chestnut locks, a needy whine struck in his throat.

“Ben,” Rey finally met his eye, “why did you come to Tibia?”

The question squeezed the breath out of him. “I panicked,” he choked out, “couldn’t think straight, thought you died in the crash. Force, Rey, I thought—”

His arms locked around Rey’s upper body of their own volition, holding her in place like a pair of iron bars. She didn’t seem to mind, in turn fisting her small but oh-so strong hands in his tunic.

“I’m here,” she whispered against his neck and grazed the underside of his jaw with her teeth, “I’m here.”

 

*

 

Ben kissed her forehead. His lips were dry. His cheeks — wet. Standing on her tiptoes, Rey kissed the bridge of his nose and pressed her forehead to his — like this, she could feel his frown relax. Ben’s hands slipped to her hips, and as she touched her lips to his, his fingers dug into her flesh bunching the jumpsuit’s material. Rey gasped into his mouth and canted her pelvis against his, seeking friction. Shared puffs of air were making her blood run hotter than the aphrodisiac ever had.

They started with bumping noses and figuring out angles, and tongues, and bites, meeting each other halfway at every step. They ended up against the nearest wall with Rey’s legs wrapped tight around Ben’s waist. His hard length pressed to her core was making Rey dizzy with desire, even with layers of clothing still separating them.

“What do you want?” Ben rasped, eyes darting between her reddened lips, and flushed cheeks, and blown pupils.

“Your love,” she answered, swallowing, voice quiet, yet sure.

So Ben gave it to her and Rey gave him hers.

They shed their layers, laying them on the floor. (Got smeared in dust within minutes but didn’t notice until well _after_.) Ben caressed her face, rubbing her cheekbones with his thumbs and tracing her ear-shells with his other fingers.

Every patch of her skin his open palms touched, he then kissed or nipped at, so tender, so gentle. He touched and kissed her throat, her shoulders, her breasts. All the while Rey was torn between the urge to surge up and claim his mouth again, then flip them over and ride him into oblivion, and the temptation to stay just as she was. Worshipped. Loved. She opted for tugging at his hair and running her hands up and down his back as far as she could reach, massaging the shifting muscles there.

As Ben was planting a line of open-mouthed kisses on Rey’s stomach, making her sigh and tremble in anticipation, his palm caught on the repelfab bandage — the last scrap of fabric on Rey. The bacta had soaked into her skin by now, so the bandage wasn’t slimy anymore, yet Ben stilled, dropping his head onto Rey’s sternum.

“What’s wrong?” she murmured, rubbing his shoulder blades and the nape of his neck soothingly.

“Nothing is. You’re alive,” he said simply, pressing his ear over her heart, but there was _so much_ behind his words.

Rey wanted to feel it. She wanted every drop of his pain and every ounce of joy, his every doubt and every triumph. She wanted him to share the cracks in her heart and her winged hopes.

She wanted the bond.

So she allowed it to open.

Rey didn’t know how had she’d managed to constrain it in the first place; _letting go_ felt like forgiving — not Ben or herself, but the galaxy for how vast and cruel and achingly beautiful it was. It felt like healing an old sorrow.

And after that, came the feeling of _Ben_ in all his naked, broken, mended, perfect glory.

“Do you feel it?” she asked urgently, sitting up and cupping his face.

“Yes,” he sighed and covered her lips with his lips and her body with his body, pushing her on her back once more.

Crossing her ankles over Ben’s rear, Rey reached between them and guided him inside her. Or, well, she tried. It took some fumbling, and shifting, and giggling, and cursing. She marked his back prettily before he even bottomed out.

“Don’t move,” he rasped when he did, “or it will be over.”

“Then we can go again,” Rey answered with a breathy laugh. “Or do you have somewhere to be?”

Again, there was _more_ under the joke’s surface, but this time the unspoken rang clearly in the bond.

_Please, please, tell me you’re not planning to follow through with the suicide mission. Need you, need you, need need need._

“Force, no,” Ben croaked, “never.”

“Good,” Rey half said, half thought before she started moving.

… Being bonded in the Force, it turned out, meant being _very_ in sync in the sheets. They did go again.

And again.

And….

 

*

 

They commed the Resistance at some point during the night, only to be told by a victory drunk fighter on duty that the First Order had fallen. Some inner treasonous shenanigans had happened at the same time as Stormtroopers had rebelled against General Hux, inspired to do so by FN-2187, or Finn. Apparently, Ben hadn’t been the only one to speak to them.

 _And_ Commander Dameron’s fleet had blown up the Order’s new — and last — super weapon.

The war was about to end. Rumor had it, Supreme Leader Ren — who had been nowhere to be found — had something to do with it, too — but those were just rumors, right? Everybody knows, soldiers gossip like no one else.

The next day Ben and Rey made their way to the shuttle, hand in hand, the Force sighing contently around them, the anti-toxin in their singing blood. They fixed the ship together and took off at sunset, this time without any trouble.

They were to rendezvous with the _Millennium Falcon_ — with Leia — soon, but still had a few hours in hyperspace.

The captain’s seat in a Xi-class light shuttle was as good for lovemaking as the floor — or the ground, or a tree trunk. Which was to say, quite uncomfortable. But as long as you were holding and were held by the right person — perfect.

 

*

 

Back on Tibia-27, the pale forest lowered its guard. It had missed one metal bird and was attacked by it; the second, the forest had caught, but now there was no need to grab at the bird’s wings — it was flying away for good.

At least the warm blooded creatures had done as the forest asked and brought the flow of the Force into balance. Among dead branches, now lifted to the sky, a white petal appeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this ending will leave everyone satisfied. I am yet to learn to write true filth but, oh, am I interested in learning. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 
> 
> In case someone's curious, the prompts I went with are:
> 
> \- sex pollen fic of the variety that they resist their sexual urges and end up having sex like rabits only after the effects of the pollen have worn off;  
> \- dramatic apologies after seriously hurt feelings because one of them said something really insensitive and stupid;  
> \- the angst when one of them believes the other to be dead only to be so relieved and happy once they see them alive and well.
> 
> The latter two turned out kind off subdued though.


End file.
